


ink made flesh

by brandflakeeee



Series: the world is quiet here [4]
Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events (TV), A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-11
Updated: 2018-05-11
Packaged: 2019-05-05 04:53:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14609778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brandflakeeee/pseuds/brandflakeeee
Summary: Beatrice explains one strange tradition of V.F.D. Olivia is intrigued.





	ink made flesh

**Author's Note:**

> Not a long one, but a snippet I've been wanting to write but couldn't seem to fit it in anywhere else. This is based mostly on what I've found as fact, with some headcanon thrown in for good measure.

“Mind yourselves, please!”

Beatrice smiled as Olivia called after the lot of children who currently were doing something with small solar powered rockets beyond the small grove of trees. Still perfectly within view, but far enough to avoid setting the recently renewed Snicket house on fire.

“I think they’ll be fine.” Beatrice commented, settling Sunny in her lap before offering her a piece of celery.

“Jacques does say I worry too much.” Olivia said quietly, and Beatrice looked at her new best friend with a sympathetic smile.

“I know it’s difficult. I worry about them too. Lemony reminds me. I try not to be overbearing, but all I can think is how hard we’ve fought to find each other.”

Olivia responded in kind by pouring Beatrice another cup of tea, before refilling her own. The pair were sat beneath a shaded umbrella on the patio at the back of the house, keeping watchful eye on the combined Quagmire-Baudelaire troupe.

It was oddly domestic, but brought a deep, previously unsated satisfaction to both Beatrice and Olivia, though neither would admit it aloud. A crave for normalcy, fleeting as it would likely be, and a craving for a close companion of the same gender for such best friend titles. They’d become close knit in their short time of knowing one another.

“My!” Sunny said suddenly, and Beatrice’s gaze returned to the five scattering in the opposite direction of whatever they’d just placed on the ground.

“I think you’re right, darling.” Beatrice mused, and to punctuate the end of her sentence something small and thin launched from the spot the children had furiously vacated, shooting up into the air above the treetops. It hovered a brief moment, before gently falling back toward the earth.

“I do wonder what they _aren’t_ capable of.” Olivia quipped, and Beatrice laughed.

“I imagine not much with their minds together. I don’t know if I should be more fearful of them, or their schoolmates when they begin again in the fall.”

Beatrice reached forward to grab a slice of apple from the tray Olivia had provided for Sunny, pausing mid reach when Olivia gasped sharply, audibly. Beatrice’s gaze snapped up to find Olivia staring at her hand and for a moment she wondered what terrible law of being a guest she had broken.

“You have it too.”

Ah, not the hand. She had moved in such a way, revealing the peculiar eye tattoo on the inside of her wrist that she hadn’t bothered to cover with makeup that day as she did most. Olivia’s keen gaze had spotted it.

“We all do.” Beatrice supplied, before using her other hand to feed the slice to Sunny. She lay her other arm against the table, wrist up, to let Olivia study the tattoo as she liked.

“They made you get tattoos as well as dragged you from your beds?” Olivia seemed slightly aghast, and vaguely Beatrice wondered what Jacques had told her about the organization she’d joined so readily.

“Tradition, mostly. No one made us at the time, but we did it at the end of our training. All in different places. To most it means nothing, to everyone in the organization it’s a way to spot friendlies.” Beatrice explained. “You don’t have to get one.” She added, hurriedly at the look on Olivia’s face.

“Lemony has one too?” She asked, instead, and Beatrice nodded.

“On his upper left shoulder, slightly larger than mine. Kit has it on her hip. Jacques, too.”

“I haven’t seen Jacques’. I can’t imagine him getting a tattoo.”

“We might have all been slightly high on adrenaline when we did it. Jacques has his very well hidden. Just behind his ear, though I can’t remember which side. His hair covers most of it.” Beatrice’s brow furrowed. “We keep them hidden, or we did. Both sides of the schism all have them, so it became somewhat of a bad reputation for a while. Especially with Olaf on the run. Anyone with a tattoo seemed suspicious, and he certainly wasn’t the only one who had it on his ankle. Dewey has his there, as well as Frank and Ernest. I'm surprised you hadn't seen Jacques yet."

The other woman turned a faint shade of red, and Beatrice laughed warmly. 

“I’m beginning to think our organization is very, very strange.” Olivia commented quietly. Beatrice offered a smile.

“Yes and no. That’s the brilliance of it, really. I admit some things are archaic and need changing, but the fundamentals are still the same. Fighting for what’s right.”

“Depending on the opinion, ‘right’ could have very different meanings for every person.” The librarian sipped her tea, and Beatrice hummed thoughtfully. Sunny gurgled away, as if to agree with Olivia. 

“And there you have why the schism began in the first place.”

"When we first met, I asked you about being the good guys. You weren't sure."

"I'm still not." Beatrice answered in truth. "There are good and bad to both sides; most of the members anymore are too young to remember the real truth behind why it became so fractured as it did. The only thing I know is that I fight for what  _I_ believe is right, and have tried my very best to align my morals with those who share the similar ideas of right and wrong. It's the only thing we can do anymore."

A shout interrupted their conversation – another slender rocket shot up from the grass yards away, this one sailing much higher and disappearing up into the clouds. It didn’t immediately come back down that Beatrice could see, using her free hand to shield her face against the sun.

“Do you think I should get one?”

Beatrice looked back over at her friend at the quiet, almost timid way she asked the question.

“What? The tattoo?” She asked in return and Olivia nodded thoughtfully. “That’s your decision, of course. It isn’t a must. But if you decide otherwise, I’ll go with you. I know a gentleman who’s very good at it by now.”

As the rocket came gently sailing back to earth within a parachute (made of a suspicious material quite close to a pair of Lemony’s pants), Olivia gave a soft noise of consideration.

When Jacques returned home late that evening after having spent most of the day with his siblings, he wasn’t surprised when his lovely librarian was still awake and waiting for him in the kitchen, a cup of tea prepared in wait and still steaming as Jacques entered.

They talked, recalling their afternoons, and Olivia only smiled quite mysteriously when Jacques suggested they retire to bed. He took up her hand and she flinched, concerning Jacques Snicket almost immediately as she drew her hand back protectively.

“Sorry.” She murmured. “I forgot how badly they said it will sting for a while.”

“What?” Jacques was clearly dumbfounded, his only rationale that ‘they’ had hurt Olivia and how badly he was going to hurt ‘them’ in return for daring to lay a hand on her. Not that she couldn’t defend herself. Jacques Snicket was just terribly protective.

She offered her hand out gingerly, fingers splayed. At first he noticed nothing, but a flash of dark ink caught his attention. She wasn’t wearing the ring he’d gifted her on the proper hand, he noticed only a fraction of a second later.

Instead, the skin of her left ring finger was angry and red and splotchy around a very familiar, rather small design.

Olivia met his gaze with the same grin he’d come to adore.

“I showed you mine, so you show me yours?”

**Author's Note:**

> Olivia and Beatrice's friendship is my favorite to write. That is all.


End file.
